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etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Baronjutter posted:

Like.. the loving opening paragraph is just a list of every home-ownership falsehood out there. The entire tone of the article reads like a cheesy sales pitch. How is that an article and not one of those ads-that-looks-like-an-article things papers sometimes have? I guess since that distinction is long gone?

I expected the final line to end with a encouragement to buy timeshares in Florida.

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Clipperton
Dec 20, 2011
Grimey Drawer

Baronjutter posted:

Like.. the loving opening paragraph is just a list of every home-ownership falsehood out there. The entire tone of the article reads like a cheesy sales pitch. How is that an article and not one of those ads-that-looks-like-an-article things papers sometimes have? I guess since that distinction is long gone?

It is one of those things, isn't it? I mean it's written by a mortgage broker and it even has a link to his website at the bottom.

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

Baronjutter posted:

I'd love to rent but this isn't europe and renting is for lazy failed poors and students, who have to live in sub-standard old buildings with lovely shared-laundry and stinky elevators. I know buying is expensive but I don't look at it as an investment, it's a luxury, it's a thing to make one happy. I hate renting, I hate the uncertainty, the lack of any sense of ownership or control. You go into a condo building and no one vandalizes poo poo because it's their own building, people have a sense of ownership and it shows. Something breaks, you can fix it and fix it right. I looked at some not-shitbox apartments and town-houses for rent but the rents are insane, higher than mortage+strata+utilities. So it's either shared-laundry apartments where you have to do guard-duty or your clothes will all be stolen, or really high-end units marketed more towards rich professionals here for a season or two.

If I could find a 2 bedroom apartment with in-suite laundry, up to date fire safety equipment, decent sound-proofing, and a management company that doesn't take months to fix broken light switches and faucets (replacing them of course with the cheapest shittiest things they can) I'd probably jump on it. But there's like no middle-ground here. It's either 50 year old poo poo-boxes full of students and drug addicts, or super high-end luxury stuff.

That said, even adding the joy of owning your own home into the math, the prices for condos are still way too high. But people always post these purely beep-boop excel sheets that never factor quality of life into the mix. It's good to have perspective though, and you're an idiot if you think buying is a wise investment. But people shouldn't forget about the huge quality of life issues when weighing buying vs renting.

I'd be quite content to just hobbit-down and live in this very cheap basement suite for years more, savings up a massive 50% downpayment or something, it's the wife...

Want to live like a student the rest of your life? Here's a solution for you! http://www.vancouverobserver.com/real-estate/cohousing-vancouver-living-outside-box

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/financial-tips-for-younger-people/

The best article about managing your money that I've read in a long time.


quote:

He also advises younger adults with higher incomes not to aim to buy a big, expensive house right away, because they are likely to move around before settling down. Ditto for fancy cars. But if they want the cars, he said, he urges them to buy “gap” insurance, which will cover the difference between what they owe on their car and what it’s worth, if the car should be totaled in accident.

Words everyone in the Best Place On Earth lives by right?

JawKnee
Mar 24, 2007





You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Cultural Imperial posted:

Want to live like a student the rest of your life? Here's a solution for you! http://www.vancouverobserver.com/real-estate/cohousing-vancouver-living-outside-box

I don't think that's really fair, it's essentially your own apartment with an additional (much larger) shared kitchen, storage area, and guest bedroom thing. Also apparently the screening is fairly rigorous so I doubt you'd have to put up with student bullshit. From what I've heard the units would pretty much be around the same cost as comparable apartments, but that article seems to say that they'd go for 20% less than going cost?

Sounds pretty good to me actually.

unlimited shrimp
Aug 30, 2008
Shared kitchens (and bathrooms) are always bullshit drama magnets because nobody wants to keep them clean and that leads to things like chore wheels for 23 year olds. :smithicide:

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

JawKnee posted:

I don't think that's really fair, it's essentially your own apartment with an additional (much larger) shared kitchen, storage area, and guest bedroom thing. Also apparently the screening is fairly rigorous so I doubt you'd have to put up with student bullshit. From what I've heard the units would pretty much be around the same cost as comparable apartments, but that article seems to say that they'd go for 20% less than going cost?

Sounds pretty good to me actually.

Whatever floats your boat. A reasonably sized apartment sells for about 400k. 20% off is 320k. 25% downpayment is 80k. Roughly speaking, the cost of borrowing 240k is probably going to be around $1200/month. Maintenance is probably going to be about 100 bucks.

If you think $1300/month for one of these loving things is more palatable than your current rent, be my guest.

A shared kitchen? gently caress me. Never in a billion loving years.

JawKnee
Mar 24, 2007





You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line
How large are the individual unit's kitchens?

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

JawKnee posted:

How large are the individual unit's kitchens?

Dude, shared resources implied shared decision making. Have you ever attended a strata meeting? I have heard horror stories about stratas full of idiots who can barely afford their units who want to defer mandatory maintenance. gently caress. That. poo poo.

JawKnee
Mar 24, 2007





You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Cultural Imperial posted:

Dude, shared resources implied shared decision making. Have you ever attended a strata meeting? I have heard horror stories about stratas full of idiots who can barely afford their units who want to defer mandatory maintenance. gently caress. That. poo poo.

Right but that article you posted said very clearly that each unit has its own kitchen in addition to the shared one. I'm wondering how large those individual kitchens are.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA
Yes, clearly we must let go of our primitive expectations of privacy and personal space and move on to this sort of post-modern communal living arrangement as a response to the rising cost of housing. It is clearly the best choice. Well other then bringing the prices back down of course, but why don't you try to just sort of change the way you live before we start going crazy with exotic ideas about affordable housing.

Urgh.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
I've been to Vancouver once and I agree it's one of the worst cities in Canada, but then my question is why do you guys stay? What keeps you here, the rain? the HST? Uwe Boll? Move to Calgary and you can still fly back to Vancouver every month to do whatever the gently caress people in Vancouver do.

I started working in real estate around 2005 and followed the US bubble blogs quite closely. What stood out in my mind was the number of people who endlessly gnashed their teeth and tore their hair about how they must must have a house and a yard and when are prices going to come down goddamit, many, maybe most of them eventually gave up and bought houses.

You know what? Once those people bought houses, and very few people on the blogs were even talking about buying houses anymore, prices went down, because everyone who wants a house had one. It's a tautology. prices will come down when people don't want houses (at that price) anymore, and they'll come down to a price people want to pay. The fact that there are still people like BaronJutter and his wife around means prices are going to be sticky. The day when no one talks about this stuff anymore because everyone who wants a house in Vancouver has moved to Winnipeg, will be the day prices come down.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Mar 19, 2013

shots shots shots
Sep 6, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post

Mr. Wynand posted:

Yes, clearly we must let go of our primitive expectations of privacy and personal space and move on to this sort of post-modern communal living arrangement as a response to the rising cost of housing. It is clearly the best choice. Well other then bringing the prices back down of course, but why don't you try to just sort of change the way you live before we start going crazy with exotic ideas about affordable housing.

As long as a significant block of people (typically unsophisticated investors who distrust other asset classes) view real estate as an investment rather than a consumption good, it's an almost unsolvable problem, especially if they have savings.

Al Nipper
May 7, 2008

by XyloJW
Just wanna say thanks for this. In no rush to buy but my girlfriend sort of is, in TO no less, with neither of us having done any real research on how bad it is. I need to show her this. We just got a relatively good deal on a newish rent-controlled apartment attached to a condo with everything paid for, all appliances, close to work etc. Got ahead of the waitlist thanks to a friend and an admission process that took everything but a blood sample. Now I'm thinking of staying well beyond any crash.

I also understand where Baronjutter was coming from on the last page. We're paying the same rent currently (with another couple, ugh) for a place of the same size in a 50-60 year old building above a bar that closes at 3am, in an area increasingly full of drunk hipsters and locals who only take breaks from screaming at the top of their lungs to take a piss in our laundromat's dryers or poo poo in our doorway. I loved this area when I was young, drunk, and unattached but I'm getting incredibly tired of slumming it. Especially now that the slum is apparently the place to be and even rents are insane.

Throatwarbler posted:

The day when no one talks about this stuff anymore because everyone who wants a house in Vancouver has moved to Winnipeg, will be the day prices come down.
Haha I almost took a job in Winnipeg purely on the basis that their real estate listings didn't send me into a depression spiral. Phew, that was a close one.

Al Nipper fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Mar 19, 2013

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

t3h z0r posted:

Just wanna say thanks for this. In no rush to buy but my girlfriend sort of is, in TO no less, with neither of us having done any real research on how bad it is. I need to show her this. We just got a relatively good deal on a newish rent-controlled apartment attached to a condo with everything paid for, all appliances, close to work etc. Got ahead of the waitlist thanks to a friend and an admission process that took everything but a blood sample. Now I'm thinking of staying well beyond any crash.

I also understand where Baronjutter was coming from on the last page. We're paying the same rent currently (with another couple, ugh) for a place of the same size in a 50-60 year old building above a bar that closes at 3am, in an area increasingly full of drunk hipsters and locals who only take breaks from screaming at the top of their lungs to take a piss in our laundromat's dryers or poo poo in our doorway. I loved this area when I was young, drunk, and unattached but I'm getting incredibly tired of slumming it. Especially now that the slum is apparently the place to be and even rents are insane.
Haha I almost took a job in Winnipeg purely on the basis that their real estate listings didn't send me into a depression spiral. Phew, that was a close one.

The problem with all those buy-vs-rent calculators is that they assume a perfectly linear growth in house prices and never take into account alpha/volatility which is absurd when you're dealing with a market that employs massive amounts of leverage. It might be true that over 50 years or something prices on average have gone up 5% p.a. but it doesn't tell you anything about the variability year over year. If prices go up 15% p.a. for 5 years and the drop down 60% in year 6, it makes a big difference whether you bought the house in year 1 or year 5, even though the average growth rate might still be positive (I think? I'm really terible at math sorry). It's like saying that because in the very long run the stock market always goes up (it has) then the best investment is always a 3x leveraged S&P 500 index ETF(yeah I know leveraged ETFs don't quite work that way but you get what I mean).

What I'm getting at is that instead of trying to build some kind of spreadsheet to figure out down to the last penny how much money you'll spend buying/renting a house, while using unrealistic assumptions about your ability to predict the future, it's better to instead think of it in terms of risk and how much money you are risking when you try to time the market, and yes regardless of your intentions, buying the house is a game of timing the market. If you don't like it then don't buy a house.

ocrumsprug
Sep 23, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Throatwarbler posted:

You know what? Once those people bought houses, and very few people on the blogs were even talking about buying houses anymore, prices went down, because everyone who wants a house had one. It's a tautology. prices will come down when people don't want houses (at that price) anymore, and they'll come down to a price people want to pay. The fact that there are still people like BaronJutter and his wife around means prices are going to be sticky. The day when no one talks about this stuff anymore because everyone who wants a house in Vancouver has moved to Winnipeg, will be the day prices come down.

Alternative Theory: They stopped talking about buying a house because houses were losing 10-20% of their value year after year, and they lost their job at the cracker factory anyways.

Something like 70% of Canadians already own their home already, so I am not sure where this unsated demand is coming from.

unlimited shrimp
Aug 30, 2008

Mr. Wynand posted:

Yes, clearly we must let go of our primitive expectations of privacy and personal space and move on to this sort of post-modern communal living arrangement as a response to the rising cost of housing. It is clearly the best choice. Well other then bringing the prices back down of course, but why don't you try to just sort of change the way you live before we start going crazy with exotic ideas about affordable housing.

Urgh.
Not to split hairs but isn't the primitive expectation for communal living, with expectations of privacy and personal space largely enabled by central heating?

Throatwarbler posted:

What I'm getting at is that instead of trying to build some kind of spreadsheet to figure out down to the last penny how much money you'll spend buying/renting a house, while using unrealistic assumptions about your ability to predict the future, it's better to instead think of it in terms of risk and how much money you are risking when you try to time the market, and yes regardless of your intentions, buying the house is a game of timing the market. If you don't like it then don't buy a house.
If you're extrapolating out to 25 or 30 years then doesn't the average matter most? Unless you're trying to flip the house after five years. But if I'm only interested in what makes the most economic sense between now and (say) when I retire, it looks like the answer is renting.

e: \/
That's what I don't get. The entire appeal of a house to me is being rooted to one spot forever, and doing with the property as I please. If I'm going to be constantly thinking of trading up/out, or how doing X will affect resale value, then I may as well be renting.

unlimited shrimp fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Mar 19, 2013

iv46vi
Apr 2, 2010
The stats I heard in university were that on average half the households in Canada buy a new house every five years. So there aren't really all that many people holding onto houses for 20 years.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

SpaceMost posted:

Not to split hairs but isn't the primitive expectation for communal living, with expectations of privacy and personal space largely enabled by central heating?

If you're extrapolating out to 25 or 30 years then doesn't the average matter most? Unless you're trying to flip the house after five years. But if I'm only interested in what makes the most economic sense between now and (say) when I retire, it looks like the answer is renting.

The same principle applies, housing booms and busts can last decades, Japan's real estate bust was like 30 years, for example, Hong Kong's house prices fell 60% from 1997 to 2003. No one loving knows what's going to happen in 30 years.

ocrumsprug posted:

Alternative Theory: They stopped talking about buying a house because houses were losing 10-20% of their value year after year, and they lost their job at the cracker factory anyways.

Something like 70% of Canadians already own their home already, so I am not sure where this unsated demand is coming from.

The other 30%? You can own more than 1 house? People will keep buying houses until they don't, It's hard to say that 70% is the right number either way.

Dr. Witherbone
Nov 1, 2010

CHEESE LOOKS ON IN
DESPAIR BUT ALSO WITH
AN ERECTION

Throatwarbler posted:

I've been to Vancouver once and I agree it's one of the worst cities in Canada, but then my question is why do you guys stay? What keeps you here?

Let's not devolve into regionalist BS as is so easy for a Canadian thread. Vancouver has all of the benefits of a highly dense and centralized city: a wide variety of businesses, restaurants, and entertainment, as well as awesome public transportation with the ever-expanding Skytrain network and busses that, though Vancouverites grumble over them, are really quite awesome.

On the nature front, there's the beautiful sea wall that provides an excellent 10k+ walk, the beaches that line it (which are as good as they get for Canada), Stanley Park, and the mountains in North Van for skiing and snowshoeing.

As far as variety for the design of the city itself goes, there's the fairly pretty and large Chinatown, as well as historical Gastown, with it's awesome steam clock and brick roads.

There's a lot to love about Vancouver :colbert:

Guy DeBorgore
Apr 6, 1994

Catnip is the opiate of the masses
Soiled Meat

Dr. Witherbone posted:

So, this just came up on CBC.

A 16% drop in house sales, with only a one percent drop in housing prices. I don't know much about real estate or market crashes, but isn't a 16% drop in demand enough for a bigger reflection in prices?

I mean, is this just realtors burying their heads in the sand and insisting that things will get better? Also, :lol: at the CREA insisting that if you ignore Vancouver then everything is peachy. Even I know that's ridiculous. Ignore part of the market and the overall market is better!!!!!! :downs:

I imagine that housing prices, like wages, are "sticky downwards." That is, it's going to be very hard to convince someone to sell their house at a loss or for less than they think it's worth. Similar to how, even when rational economics might suggest you should accept a wage cut, people just don't like doing that. Once wages/housing prices have reached a certain level, they want to stay there out of inertia.

ocrumsprug
Sep 23, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Throatwarbler posted:

The other 30%? You can own more than 1 house? People will keep buying houses until they don't, It's hard to say that 70% is the right number either way.

Well the sales stats for the last year in Vancouver would seem to indicate that we have reached that point. Presumably we can just sit back and wait for the tautological obvious decline now.

At least in houses, in the short term condo's are probably going to propped up by suckers that need to jump in at whatever the bank will let them carry.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

ocrumsprug posted:

Well the sales stats for the last year in Vancouver would seem to indicate that we have reached that point. Presumably we can just sit back and wait for the tautological obvious decline now.

At least in houses, in the short term condo's are probably going to propped up by suckers that need to jump in at whatever the bank will let them carry.

I'm not so sure we're there yet. You have to remember that they are comparing monthly sales volume year on year, the declines aren't cumulative. I don't think we've reached the kind of declines that we saw in 2008 yet, and it bounced back after 2008. That and the number of posters still complaining about not being desperate to buy a house I guess.

Pinterest Mom
Jun 9, 2009

Uhh...

quote:

Manulife Bank has reversed its move to cut the mortgage rates it offers homebuyers after a rebuke from the federal finance ministry, The Globe and Mail has learned.

“After consulting with the Department of Finance, Manulife Bank has withdrawn the promotional campaign and reverted to our previous posted rate,” Manulife said in an e-mailed statement.

The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday that Manulife had cut its rate for five-year fixed mortgages to 2.89 per cent from 3.09 per cent, part of a move by lenders to drive down rates to attract homebuyers in the spring selling season.

A spokesperson for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said an official from the minister’s office contacted Manulife Monday evening to express concern with the rate cut.

The spokesperson said Mr. Flaherty was not happy with Manulife’s decision, and felt the move was unacceptable.


This seems wildly, wildly inappropriate.

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

Dr. Witherbone posted:

Let's not devolve into regionalist BS as is so easy for a Canadian thread. Vancouver has all of the benefits of a highly dense and centralized city: a wide variety of businesses, restaurants, and entertainment, as well as awesome public transportation with the ever-expanding Skytrain network and busses that, though Vancouverites grumble over them, are really quite awesome.

On the nature front, there's the beautiful sea wall that provides an excellent 10k+ walk, the beaches that line it (which are as good as they get for Canada), Stanley Park, and the mountains in North Van for skiing and snowshoeing.

As far as variety for the design of the city itself goes, there's the fairly pretty and large Chinatown, as well as historical Gastown, with it's awesome steam clock and brick roads.

There's a lot to love about Vancouver :colbert:

If only we had a real economy that created real jobs.

Something that drives me crazy about this place is the uncritical view Vancouverites take on the cost of living. People here don't think anything of paying $7.65 for a pint of beer or $150 for a dinner (with wine). My sense is that everyone here wants to live like a baller and they don't care if they have to get in debt to do it.

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum

Cultural Imperial posted:

If only we had a real economy that created real jobs.

Something that drives me crazy about this place is the uncritical view Vancouverites take on the cost of living. People here don't think anything of paying $7.65 for a pint of beer or $150 for a dinner (with wine). My sense is that everyone here wants to live like a baller and they don't care if they have to get in debt to do it.

Vancouver is a sleepy resource backwater that up and decided that it was going to put on a show of trying to be LA or New York, in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Dubai. The inhabitants of Vancouver are like any other city that finds itself suddenly booming: live like a king and gently caress the consequences. When the hangover finally comes and we go back to being like Prince Rupert in a decade or so, I will very much enjoy it.

Assuming D-Wave or General Fusion doesn't turn Burnaby into a crater, of course.

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

Rime posted:

Vancouver is a sleepy resource backwater that up and decided that it was going to put on a show of trying to be LA or New York, in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Dubai. The inhabitants of Vancouver are like any other city that finds itself suddenly booming: live like a king and gently caress the consequences. When the hangover finally comes and we go back to being like Prince Rupert in a decade or so, I will very much enjoy it.

Assuming D-Wave or General Fusion doesn't turn Burnaby into a crater, of course.

Are we even sure D-Wave isn't some kind of scam? That's so loving typical of Vancouver.



edit: oh dear god. General Fusion is trying to commercialize fusion reactors....loving lolling out loud

Rime, why don't you and me buy some space in Burnaby and set up a hyperspace engine manufacturing business? Or maybe a time machine factory?

namaste friends fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Mar 19, 2013

SpannerX
Apr 26, 2010

I had a beer with Stephen Harper once and now I like him.

Fun Shoe

Rime posted:

Vancouver is a sleepy resource backwater that up and decided that it was going to put on a show of trying to be LA or New York, in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Dubai.

Ah, Dubai, what a hell hole that place is, and that was before the crash. If I never see it again it'll be too soon. It couldn't happen to a nicer place. I do have to say it was impressive to see.

Excelsiortothemax
Sep 9, 2006
I'm not sure why the cold fusion reactor is so hilarious. The science is there, just a matter of trial and error. Even if THEY can't get it right at least their science will contribute to the of the research.

Getting business and private enterprises to invest in fusion is the way to get the best and brightest involved.

That's part of why neighbourhood nuclear power plants can be a thing.

I'd totally install one.

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum

Cultural Imperial posted:

Are we even sure D-Wave isn't some kind of scam? That's so loving typical of Vancouver.


D-Wave is legit, they actually have built a quantum computer. Lockheed bought it, even.

General Fusion is...questionable.

Excelsiortothemax
Sep 9, 2006

Rime posted:

D-Wave is legit, they actually have built a quantum computer. Lockheed bought it, even.

General Fusion is...questionable.

Fair enough. I haven't done any research beyond that I heard that there was a company in BC trying to set something up.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

Pinterest Mom posted:

Uhh...

This seems wildly, wildly inappropriate.

Why?

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

I just think it's pretty ironic coming from the Conservatives. This is Big Government messing with the affairs of Strong, Canadian, Business Interests, plain and simple.

etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Rime posted:

Assuming D-Wave or General Fusion doesn't turn Burnaby into a crater, of course.

Maybe instead the experiments will open the door to a parallel universe which has good Vancouver?

NewtGoongrich
Jan 21, 2012
I am a shit stain on the face of humanity, I have no compassion, only hatred, bile and lust.

PROUD SHIT STAIN

Excelsiortothemax posted:

I'm not sure why the cold fusion reactor is so hilarious. The science is there, just a matter of trial and error. Even if THEY can't get it right at least their science will contribute to the of the research.

Getting business and private enterprises to invest in fusion is the way to get the best and brightest involved.

That's part of why neighbourhood nuclear power plants can be a thing.

I'd totally install one.

I'm not physicist, but isn't cold fusion widely accepted to be a pseudoscience?

Pinterest Mom
Jun 9, 2009


I have a pretty big problem with the minister's office calling up a bank on a whim and telling them that their interest rates are too low. When the government intervenes in the economy, I feel it should be rules based, transparently, and in a way that renders the government accountable for its actions.

When the minister of Finance calls a bank and asks them to raise their mortgage rate, there's actually no legal authority behind it. He doesn't have the power to dictate what banks charge. So, what, there's an implied threat to legislate or take other action? It's really sketchy, and it doesn't seem like how a real country governs itself.

In this case, it's the minister telling a bank that it has to charge more money for its product, not less, leaving home-buyers worse off. I don't know why anyone would support the minister doing this.

Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 19, 2013

JawKnee
Mar 24, 2007





You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Pinterest Mom posted:

In this case, it's the minister telling a bank that it has to charge more money for its product, not less, leaving home-buyers worse off. I don't know why anyone would support the minister doing this.

I'm not very well informed on how mortgages work, but this struck me as trying to avoid propping up an ailing housing market by making mortgages easier to get regardless of whether they ought to be easier to get or not.

I agree though that it is really weird how it went down.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Throatwarbler posted:

I've been to Vancouver once and I agree it's one of the worst cities in Canada, but then my question is why do you guys stay?
Family? Friends? My wife and her family? Asking people to just uproot and move is pretty terrible. I say that as someone who has moved a lot growing up, and it's extremely taxing on the whole family. This is why newly-gentrified neighborhoods pricing out the existing locals is actually really really damaging to the community. But FY,GM amirite?

(There is a way of doing this in a way that lets the community grow and improve without loving people over. It's more or less the opposite of what Vancouver does.)

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

shots shots shots posted:

As long as a significant block of people (typically unsophisticated investors who distrust other asset classes) view real estate as an investment rather than a consumption good, it's an almost unsolvable problem, especially if they have savings.
Poppyock. You can fiddle with the regulation around mortgage loans and insurance for second homes (and first homes as well). You can build affordable housing. You can increase supply by increasing density. You can provide housing assistance. It's a perfectly solvable problem.

Mrs. Wynand fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 20, 2013

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Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Throatwarbler posted:

The problem with all those buy-vs-rent calculators is that they assume a perfectly linear growth in house prices and never take into account alpha/volatility which is absurd when you're dealing with a market that employs massive amounts of leverage. It might be true that over 50 years or something prices on average have gone up 5% p.a. but it doesn't tell you anything about the variability year over year. If prices go up 15% p.a. for 5 years and the drop down 60% in year 6, it makes a big difference whether you bought the house in year 1 or year 5, even though the average growth rate might still be positive (I think? I'm really terible at math sorry). It's like saying that because in the very long run the stock market always goes up (it has) then the best investment is always a 3x leveraged S&P 500 index ETF(yeah I know leveraged ETFs don't quite work that way but you get what I mean).

What I'm getting at is that instead of trying to build some kind of spreadsheet to figure out down to the last penny how much money you'll spend buying/renting a house, while using unrealistic assumptions about your ability to predict the future, it's better to instead think of it in terms of risk and how much money you are risking when you try to time the market, and yes regardless of your intentions, buying the house is a game of timing the market. If you don't like it then don't buy a house.


The spreadsheet is valuable not because it helps you predict the actual outcome (you can plug in all sorts of far more pessimistic numbers in it and still come out ahead), but to see what a huge difference fiddling with numbers can make. You're right on the money when you say it's about volatility. That's exactly the point - people are putting a third of the money they don't even have yet into this single, actually really quite risky investment.

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